Founder Spotlight – Bradley Owen

Bradley (center) with fellow board member Todd Bashor (left) and student and volunteers at the annual “Scratch Out Poverty” toy drive event.

SPARK Programming started when Bradley Owen told his boys (Brenden and Braydon) to stop playing video games – and start making them. Which in short, led Bradley to search for and discover MIT’s Scratch programming environment. As Brenden and Braydon showed off their new programming skills, their friends all wanted to make their own video games, too. Instead of teaching each one individually, Bradley booked the training room at ServiceNow in San Diego one weekend in December of 2012 and had all the boys’ friends and parents come and learn. By Monday, word had spread and Bradley’s co-workers asked why they were not invited to the “programming class.”

And SPARK (Simple Programming and Robotics for Kids) was born.

Since then, they have taught over 1,000 students the fun of making their own video games at ServiceNow in San Diego and Santa Clara as well as UC San Diego, The University of Arizona and MIT. They founded the non-profit SPARK Programming with the mission to inspire the next generation of programmers.

See the video below that features an interview with Bradley Owen to learn more.

*SPARK Programming is a California nonprofit Public Benefit Corporation – 501(c)(3), EIN 47-3063038